Hello, I’m Pang Ying. Welcome to the post-debate segment for Episode 25 of Think Like a Debater. It is about three in the morning, and we are going to talk about AI sex robots.

Zhan Qingyun and I shortlisted several motions and put them to a vote on Weibo. The public chose this one—clearly eager to watch the excitement.

Surprisingly, there is a great deal of literature on this topic. I read two books: one collection of academic papers and another anthology exploring the ethics of AI sex robots.

Both named companies making some of the most advanced products currently on the market. I searched one company’s website and saw its robots. Their appearance was remarkably realistic, and customers could customize their preferred face, body, and style.

But although the body looked realistic and attractive, the mind was roughly at Siri’s level. Voice assistants made by today’s technology companies are near the state of the art, and none can converse like a real person. Discussing AI sex robots therefore still requires imagining a future form of the technology.

How far into that imagined future we should travel is a major question.Do we assume human-level or superintelligent AI, perhaps even self-aware machines that have become a new species?

Current technology remains far from machine self-awareness. If robots truly became conscious, the moral questions would be entirely different from those surrounding sophisticated but unconscious machines.

The two sides need some shared definition of an AI sex robot, including whether they are imagining twenty, fifty, or a hundred years ahead, before the discussion can be meaningful.Without that clarity, a conventional debate easily degenerates into incompatible definitions and two sides talking past each other.

Zhan and I had enough tacit understanding to avoid that. Our purpose was not merely to win, and we agreed to discuss the future, but not an unimaginably distant future. That is the first point.

Second, a self-aware AI robot would essentially be a new species. It would possess its own consciousness and might or might not choose sex work; “sex robot” would become merely one possible occupation.